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South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha shakes hands with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at the World Economic Forum on ASEAN in Ha Noi

Kang Kyung-wha will go down in history as the first South Korean foreign minister to pay an official visit to Pyongyang. Her name appeared on the list of people that the Blue House announced on Sept. 16 will be part of the official delegation accompanying South Korean President Moon Jae-in to North Korea for his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Officials from the Foreign Ministry and the Unification Ministry said that as far as they knew there was no precedent of a South Korean Foreign Minister officially visiting Pyongyang, not even during previous inter-Korean summits. Inter-Korean relations were defined in the 1991 North-South Basic Agreement as being not “a relationship between states [. . .but] a special interim relationship stemming from the process toward reunification.”

As such, South Korea’s Unification Ministry has dealt with North Korean departments that specialize in relations with the South, such as the United Front Department. That’s why South Korea’s Foreign Minister did not join its official delegations to the North during the inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007.

But now that denuclearization has become a key agenda item that could mean dramatic progress in inter-Korean relations, Kang Kyung-wha was part of the official delegation at the summit in Panmunjom on Apr. 27 and now once again at the Pyongyang summit this month. This choice basically reflects Moon and Kim’s determination to prioritize peace and coexistence over unification.

Kang has been in close communication with her American counterpart US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has visited Pyongyang three times as a special envoy for President Donald Trump. During two visits to South Korea on Sept. 10 and 15, Stephen Biegun, the US State Department’s special representative for North Korea, met with Lee Do-hoon, South Korea’s special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs.

South Korea and the US are working together to break through the current deadlock in the North Korea-US denuclearization talks. Seoul’s decision to send its foreign minister to Pyongyang under these circumstances is thought to show its commitment to having its senior negotiator mediate North Korea’s talks with the US.

“Denuclearization is an important item on the summit agenda. South Korea and the US are in deliberations about that, and their deliberations need to lead to negotiations between North Korea and the US. That’s apparently why the foreign minister was included on the delegation,” said a senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

By Noh Ji-won, staff reporter

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